Housing
The problem of affordable housing for the working classes had started to be tackled at the turn of the century by Arthur Wakerley in North Evington, where he planned and built a suburb, and by the Anchor Boot and Shoe Co-operative Society, who built Humberstone Garden Suburb through the creation of a worker's co-operative. Leicester had even had its first council flats built on Winifred Street in 1900.
In 1918, Lloyd George proclaimed that he wanted 'to make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in', and said there must be good quality housing for the working classes. Government Housing Acts had already started addressing the problem (there were several from 1890-1936), In 1919, Parliament passed the ambitious Housing Act, often known as the ‘Addison Act' after its author, Dr Christopher Addison, the Minister of Health. This promised government subsidies to help finance the construction of 500,000 houses within three years. As the economy rapidly weakened in the early 1920s, however, funding had to be cut, and only 213,000 homes were completed under the Act's provisions.
The first council housing estate in Leicester was erected on Coleman Road, around 1919. These houses had three bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen, living room, and parlour downstairs. Around 750 houses were built in this period, and another 640 or so under the terms of a further Housing Act of 1923, although initially the projected need was for ten thousand new homes.
Listen to memories of post-WW1 council housing here - Housing the People.
Across Leicester different designs were used for houses, one of the main considerations being whether the house had a parlour or not - rents were higher if there was one. Attempts to build houses more cheaply resulted in Arthur Wakerley's £299 houses of 1922. The half-timbered cottage style of houses on the Narborough Road (1927), brought the feel of the country into the city (although the Assistant City Architect, Mr Benson, later recalled that people didn't take to pieces of wood being stuck on the outside of their houses and this 'experiment' wasn't a success!).
However, not enough houses were being built and space was running out in the city, so the planners had to look to the estates on the edge of the city for more room. In 1924, building was started on 1,000 concrete, and 500 brick, houses on the Park Estate, now known as the Saffron Lane Estate. The concrete homes were known as 'Boot' houses, after the Sheffield based firm Henry Boot and Sons. Concrete houses were seen to be quick to build, using a fashionable material, but defects in the construction were soon apparent and although 500 more concrete houses were built at Braunstone, brick was used thereafter.
The perceived success of the Park Estate scheme convinced the authorities of the advantages of the development of large sites and they turned their attention to Braunstone.
For people with more money, huge estates of semi-detached suburban housing sprung up around the city. These pages look at this process, but concentrates on the experiences of those in the poorer housing as it was they who experienced the greatest changes.
The slum clearance programmes started in the 1930s and ran right up to the start of World War Two (WW2).
Leicester's situation was similar to many towns and cities across the UK. This film, made in 1935, highlighted the problems.
What happened next?
WW2 brought house building to a stop just as further suburban estates such as New Parks, acquired by the corporation through a succession of purchases in 1933–7, were about to be developed. Slum clearances stopped and didn't resume until the 1950s. Leicester wasn't bombed heavily during the war, so there was still a lot of slum clearance work to be done and you can read more about this on the Post War Leicester 1945-1962 website.
Further reading
EMOHA's online collections feature many memories of housing between the wars.
A detailed overview of housing in the 20th century is provided in ‘Leicester in the 20th Century’ by Nash & Reeder (1993). Also useful for an overview is British History Online.
The Story of Leicester - 100 Years of Council Housing.
Oral histories of the individual estates can be found in 'A Home of Our Own. 70 Years of Council House memories in Leicester' by Bill Willbond.
The story of the slums and the clearances is told in 'The Slums of Leicester' by Ned Newitt (2009).
The UK Parliament website - Council Housing (Accessed 23/5/23)